


clandestine meetings and longing stares

by Anonymous



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Lawyers, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, M/M, in a way this is pro bono
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:01:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26433055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: It’s a tale as old as time: fall in love, fall out of love, drop an atomic bomb on every happy memory you ever had together by fighting over who gets the pet turtle duck in front of a judge picking listlessly at a papercut. Sokka’s seen it often enough by now, because he’s been a divorce attorney for enough years.Well, not the turtle duck specifically, but he’s heard stories.It’s not what he’s expecting when his buddy from Wushu-at-the-rec-center tells Sokka he’s got a client for him.
Relationships: Azula/Ty Lee (Avatar), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 56
Kudos: 283
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> doing my most-detested thing and posting in chapters just to fuck around. only wrote this for ivy because I am nothing if not a giving and loyal friend who let him choose Taylor Swift Title--we all know my true passion is [redacted] and will get back to Normal Programming accordingly. 
> 
> Don’t take your legal or ethics cues from this fic because it will not go well for you and I’ve made stuff up to grease my own plot wheels even though I KNOW how to get divorced, baby. This is fanfic set in the modern US because that’s the only legal system I know but I’ve switched some shit up there too.

It’s a tale as old as time: fall in love, fall out of love, drop an atomic bomb on every happy memory you ever had together by fighting over who gets the pet turtle duck in front of a judge picking listlessly at a papercut. Sokka’s seen it often enough by now, because he’s been a divorce attorney for enough years. 

Well, not the turtle duck specifically, but he’s heard stories. 

It’s not what he’s expecting when his buddy from Wushu-at-the-rec-center tells Sokka he’s got a client for him.

Johnny’s a midlevel corporate sales guy for some techy company, a job he describes using MBA jargon Sokka doesn’t really understand but nods along to anyway. Sokka thinks it seems like mostly what he does is send those terrible, allegedly “friendly” messages to his contacts who are in corporate sales at similarly soulless corporations, plan to get lunch, and then sign advertising deals to create the world’s most boring ads for Bud Light that Sokka’ll have to watch every night on TV.

Still, Johnny does spar okay, so Sokka’s not gonna _stop_ nodding in simulated understanding just because he didn’t do so well in his undergrad Business Transactions class.

But the tale goes something like this, at least this time around:

“I think I have someone for you,” Johnny says, unpinning mats for Thursday night practice on the floor of the rec center. Sokka misses the practice facilities back home, which at least had a locker room, one that isn’t constantly in use for something marked on the calendar as Bits and Bytes Tech Happy Hour. (Which. In the _locker room?_ But Sokka doesn’t really get coding anyway—he’s more of a practical engineering kinda guy.)

“So I’m, uh, super-busy with work right now, so I don’t know that I have time to date.” Sokka hasn’t made an effort to tell his sparring partners that he’s gay. In fact, he would say he’s taken every justifiable step short of lying to them when they ask why he doesn’t have a girlfriend. Look, he likes working out. He likes practicing with his weapons, likes having buddies to riff off of instead of just running through the motions all alone, and he really likes not shattering the few vases he has left around his apartment with his practice staff.

But he’s really under no illusion these are his friends outside this rec center.

In fact, he might kill someone if he had to do corporate lunch with Johnny.

And he’d definitely lose his law license for murder, he thinks grimly. Though it’d probably be downgraded to voluntary manslaughter, given he’s sure Johnny would provoke him into it by saying “deliverables” or jacking off over some rich dude’s “entrepreneurial heart.” But he thinks he’d even get disbarred for voluntary manslaughter, so it’s not worth it.

“Not for pussy, Sokka. Get your head outta the gutter, champ,” Johnny says. Sokka’s first thought is that probably, if his head was in the gutter, he’d be champing at the bit for pussy and not politely declining blind dates to sit at home with a few take-home accordion files. “I’ve got a client for you.”

This is a very dangerous sentence for a nonlawyer to speak, because people like Johnny tend to see Sokka’s business card and think he can handle anything from the DUI and possession charge Johnny told him about last year (“It was just a little bit of coke, Sokka. It’s Seattle, aren’t they supposed to be liberal about this stuff?”) to Johnny’s attempts to sue his HOA so he could paint his townhome Sealhawks green. (Sokka could do that, probably, but he politely refused to help on purely ethical grounds, because spirits, that would be ugly.)

“Okay,” Sokka says cautiously. “I’m only taking family law cases right now, though, so I don’t know I’m the best man for the job. I’ve got tons of buddies, though.”

“Yeah, man, jeez,” Johnny laughs. “You make it seem like I never listen to you when you talk about this stuff, I know you’re MILF defender extraordinaire.” Which is probably _not_ how Sokka would characterize helping (admittedly often-hot) women get divorced and take a fair share of their rich husbands’ assets in the process, but it’s kinda fun, as long as the milves themselves can laugh about it.

Johnny continues, “No MILFs this time around, but I’m tellin’ you, this one is gonna rock you. I can’t tell you exactly what’s going on, but. Try not to be too surprised when you see what it is.” Johnny makes a limp-wrist gesture, which Sokka squints at.

“Not that there’s anything _wrong_ with that,” Johnny says. “But, you know, don’t say anything weird. It’s kinda weird though.”

Okay, Sokka thinks. So, Johnny has a client for him who is gay, and just wanted to homophobically tell _Sokka_ not to be homophobic.

Sounds good.

Sokka finishes tying his hair up, picks up his staff, and nearly decapitates Johnny. He does apologize to him after, because it’s annoying to be a ringer in a friendly sparring practice. He was just distracted thinking about what Johnny said, so he wasn’t thinking. But he doesn’t say that, because “Sorry I nearly beat you into a pulp, I’m usually more focused on trying to be bad” seems like it’d only add insult to injury.

When he’s gotten his street clothes back on, he tugs out his wallet and hands a card to Johnny. “For your friend,” he says. “If he calls, we can get a meeting set up.”

***

Sokka is good at his job, mostly. He went to law school because he didn’t really care enough to linger in the Navy Civil Engineering Corps and get knocked around until his brain broke. His brain might not be all that valuable, but he likes thinking sometimes. He’d just usually rather do it for himself and not some vague military force telling him he needs to create a proton bomb or whatever.

His advisor had said, “A lot of people would be interested in talking to an interesting kid like you for grad school,” because he wanted Sokka to get a Ph.D. or at least an MBA. ‘ _Interesting_ ’ is code for ‘gay.’ It could be code for any kind of diversity, really, but Sokka’s not all that diverse beyond the gay and Indigenous thing. Sokka doesn’t really mind being called interesting; he just thinks it’s probably a misnomer as applied to him.

But Sokka doesn’t think he’s qualified to be a doctor of any kind—it seems like a lot of pressure to have to worry about saving someone’s life, even if it’s only their philosophical life. _And_ he’d just failed Business Transactions, failed it in the way that he thought if he ever saw a business transaction again he might burst into tears, and he was pretty sure the B in MBA stood for business, so he said, “Professor, I’ve been thinking about law school.” This was a lie, and Sokka didn’t even really know where it came from.

But his advisor had clapped him on the back and said, “Honestly, Sokka, I didn’t know you were thinking about your future at all. I think that sounds great.”

And then he was in law school, took a single patent engineering class, and decided a contract or patent rights negotiation was a lot closer to a business transaction than he’d like, but it was too late.

So now he works out of a lower-rise building on the outskirts of Seattle, helping make sure MILFs get custody of their kids instead of their terrifyingly-wealthy Jeff Bezos-type ex-husbands who don’t know the kids’ birthdays. It’s fun, because there are not that many real rules, beyond being reasonable, and filing stuff on time, and making sure to keep tissues in the office.

Plus Sokka loves drama, but only wants to be on the outskirts of it, so hearing various blonde women (and occasionally _very_ hot brunette women) complain about men he doesn’t know is thrilling, and getting to use breakup texts in a professional context is unbeatable. Much better than talking about KPIs or churn or whatever it is he missed in Business Transactions because he was too busy flunking it.

He has a nice office, but not too nice, because he cares about appearing approachable, and a picture of Katara and Aang at the harbor launching the submarine he built when he was fifteen on his wall, so he can say, “Oh, you know. I know all about making things, I like to get deep in the details. It was really a team effort, you know. I’m very loyal, gotta give cred where it’s due.” It’s all about limited information: make clients think he’s a hometown boy with deep roots and connections, that he’ll “get” their ex-husbands because he’s a grown-up nerd with expensive playthings too, that he’s trustworthy and unwavering and detail-oriented.

He thinks he’s pretty trustworthy, but you can’t just _say_ that. The ship picture works.

At least, it pretty much works, until Ty Lee pops her head into Sokka’s office and makes a face at it. “Johnny said you’d get why all of this is so tricky,” she says, and Sokka lets his brain catch up. Okay, Ty Lee is Johnny’s friend. Which means Ty Lee is Johnny’s limp-wrist-gesture friend. And Johnny knows Sokka only really does family law right now, said it just yesterday.

So Ty Lee is either gay-divorcing or gay-parenting or gay-marrying, all of which it would kind of seem like Sokka would’ve heard about already, what with pretty much every lesser glossy magazine covering everything Ty Lee does, even if it’s just “wearing clothes” or “getting coffee” or, allegedly, “being a member of a secret warrior cult.”

Sokka thinks maybe he should pivot his career to being a tabloid journalist—he misses just making stuff up sometimes. Now he has to add the ‘allegedly,’ which is kind of a wet blanket on the whole thing.

Oh, and _wait_. Ty Lee’s definitely enjoyed ships before, because last week’s _Us! Weekly_ had a whole feature on her bathing suits on her yacht tour, so no need to knock Sokka’s ship just because it doesn’t have a tanning deck. Tanning isn’t any fun underwater anyway.

Still, Sokka gets up with a warm “Hey, hi,” shakes Ty Lee’s hand, and then closes the door, because discretion is part of “get[ting] why all of this is so tricky.” He points to the chair in front of his desk lightly as he turns around to grab a pen, then swivels back to face Ty Lee, who is picking at the loose staple on the underside of Sokka’s leather office chair for guests. Sokka should fix that.

“So, you know Johnny?” Sokka says casually. Gotta warm people up a little before you start asking them about their relationship failures, or relationship insecurities, or desire to destroy their exes’ lives, or extramarital affairs. Et cetera.

“Yeah, we’ve worked together. I’m an influencer. Or, well, I work in brand marketing,” Ty Lee says, and like. Sokka _knows_ , but he’s torn between saying “I know” (thereby implying he’s attentive, aware, well-informed, interested) or “That’s great, dude” (thereby implying he’s not intimidated, won’t get weird and hero-worshippy, isn’t chasing clout), so he says “I’m great, dude.”

It’s hard to come back from that without self-awareness, so he just grimaces and says, “I know, I see your influencing all over.”

Well, that works. He wouldn’t say it’s a stroke of brilliance in the client communication realm, but it’s flattering enough. Ty Lee’s good at her job, if her job’s influencing. “I thought the, uh, campaign you did for the gummy vitamins was really good, I saw it on Instagram. It’s too bad they got banned by the FDA.”

“’Hair and Nails Fight Poverty?’ That one was good,” Ty Lee says with a sigh. “Yeah, I mean. It’s over. I’m not crying myself to sleep over it.”

Sokka resists the impulse to transition by asking Ty Lee what she _is_ crying herself to sleep over, but luckily Ty Lee makes the jump for him.

“I’m afraid that my Spotify Rewind from this year is gonna be Celine Dion’s ‘All By Myself’ a hundred times.”

Okay. Not a legal problem, but Sokka can handle it. _Simply listen to other songs._ There are even several playlists he could recommend with admittedly dancier and bouncier hits by gay icons. Sokka shifts over to his computer, pulls up his Spotify. “We could work on that. Are you looking for music that’s sad, or music that’s good?”

Ty Lee laughs. It’s a good laugh. She clearly does it a lot, and it doesn’t even seem fake. Sokka can see why people like her so much. “Sokka! You’re funny. Johnny didn’t tell me you were funny. That’s good! I was _so_ stressed about all of this and no offense, but Johnny kinda sucks, so I didn’t know if you’d suck too. Getting divorced is super-weird.” 

_Phew, okay_. Sokka’s glad he didn’t start making a playlist, then.

You never can tell, like. Maybe if he were making the big bucks, he’d be paying attorneys to make him Spotify playlists. It’s hard to say.

“Yeah,” Sokka says with his sympathetic eyes. “It’s definitely a stressful time. Do you want to tell me about it?”

“No, not really,” Ty Lee says, but luckily she does tell Sokka about it. “So, I got married in Vegas. And now I need to get divorced.”

“Oh, we can probably get that annulled, if that’s all. Britney did it.”

Ty Lee grimaces. “I mean, we were also married for five years.”

“Okay, lead with _that_ , then,” Sokka says.

“And, I, uh. I think we have to keep it quiet. Can we do that?”

***

Sozin Sage is not a firm Sokka usually works with, seeing as he didn’t go to Yale (or, y’know, go to Not-Yale, but graduate at the top of his class). He didn’t even know they _did_ family law, to be honest, thought mostly it was unintelligible corporate law and union-busting and class-actions and occasionally providing counsel on the big cases that hit the Supreme Court for PR cred.

But Ty Lee told him, “I don’t care about getting money from her, so if she wants to get a fancy lawyer, it’s fine. We just need to get divorced.” Sokka resents the implication he couldn’t get money for Ty Lee in the divorce if Ty Lee wanted it—Sokka’s very good at it—but he’s into the reasonable expectations.

Clearly, Sozin Sage is not a firm that cares about appearing approachable, all glass-walled conference rooms and lush office plants and elevators without buttons. The pen he uses to sign in as a guest probably weighs a full pound, and the office manager at the desk is intimidatingly hot (and competent, which scares Sokka, but also tends to make people even hotter). Her shoes clearly cost more than Sokka’s whole suit. It’s partially just that women’s clothing is pricey, but he’d bet anyone of any gender at a firm like this would be rocking shoes that cost more than Sokka’s whole suit, too.

Maybe he should buy some more expensive suits.

Ty Lee tugs on his sleeve, points to a conference room. “She’s in there,” Ty Lee says, and Sokka turns to see probably the hottest person he’s ever seen sitting pin-straight at the head of a modern chrome table in the crispest deep red suit he’s ever seen. He has neat black hair and the smoothest skin Sokka’s ever seen on an adult human except for a bright-red scar over one eye, and he’s jacked, but in a tasteful way—Sokka can tell, just through the suit, which means the suit is definitely custom. _And_ he’s talking to Azula Sozin.

“She’s the hot scary one, duh,” Ty Lee says, and then turns to Sokka, clearly realizing the issue. “It’s Azula, I mean,” she amends, pointing at Azula before Sokka can ask which one she’s talking about.

Sokka was pretty sure what Azula Sozin looked like, just from general knowledge, but he’s glad Ty Lee made sure. It’s called due diligence, it’s always best to make sure. _Plus_ , he thinks, _in the grand scheme of ethics violations, it’s probably better to be attracted to opposing counsel and not your client’s ex._

The office manager looks between them. “Do you need a moment to confer with your client?” she asks in a tone that is office-warm but clearly cold underneath. Damn, she’s good.

Sokka shakes his head quickly. He feels like he’s just gotten yelled at, somehow.

She leads them to the door, heels clicking, and says, “Mr. Sozin, your 1 PM is here.” 

When Sokka was eleven, he got to take the class mink snake home for a weekend, had to feed him a dead spider rat that looked pretty fucking alive. His grandmother had been somewhat appalled, but his teacher said it was a good lesson about the circle of life. When the office manager closes the door quietly behind herself, Sokka feels a lot like the spider rat—he knows he’s not getting out of this alive.

The hot scary one (the lawyer, not the socialite) presses a button on the table, and the glass walls frost up, going opaque. _Is that a thing?_ He gives Sokka an assessing look, face unreadable. Sokka scratches at the side of his neck. It kinda feels like this is the type of guy who will introduce himself on his own initiative.

And he does, getting up to shake Sokka’s hand. His grip is the perfect firmness—decisive, but not so strong it’s clear he’s aggressive or overcompensating. “Zuko Sozin,” he says. Sokka would like him to run through that again, partially because he doesn’t feel confident he could repeat it and partially because he just wants to watch Zuko Sozin say things over and over. Sokka is thinking about the way his mouth moves more than the words he’s saying. He’ll probably keep thinking about it later, too.

“Uh, I’m Sokka. Good to see you. And this is my client, Ty Lee,” he says.

“Would you like to take a seat, Mr., what was it, again?” Zuko says.

“Sokka’s fine,” Sokka says, smiling. This usually works for him—especially at this stage, keeping things amicable can really help. But Zuko just says, “Okay.” Still, Sokka takes this as tacit permission to use his first name, too.

But when he tries, “So, Zuko—”

“It’s Mr. Sozin,” Zuko says, and it’s not the apologetic tone Sokka uses when people mangle his last name. “I’ll keep it simple, Sokka,” Zuko says. “My client is flexible. I think our clients agree we’d like to hold off on filing until it’s absolutely necessary, just to keep media exposure down. And, of course, the only hard condition is that she keep the tiger monkey.”

Sokka gets why people get married, even though he always sees them getting divorced too. He thinks he might never get married, given he’s seen how bad it gets, but he also thinks he might get married two months after meeting the next love of his life, because he tends to feel the drive to get married immediately every time he meets a new love of his life, and if he waits more than two months to get married, they’ll have broken up already. Maybe Zuko would marry him. He doesn’t look like the type to care all that much about stealing Sokka’s pets, if it came to that.

Azula pipes up, “I’ll give you whatever, Ty, I don’t care. But can we talk first, maybe?”

There’s a kicking noise, and then Azula makes a face as if she’s been kicked under the table. Zuko looks as cool as ever.

Ty Lee looks at Sokka nervously. “I think that’s probably a bad idea, Azula.”

“I don’t want to get divorced.” Azula has a strong chin, Sokka thinks. It looks even stronger the way she’s set her teeth.

“And I don’t want you to lose your father’s company and force Zuko to do all of the work just because you don’t want to get divorced!”

“Well, it’s too late for that,” Zuko says. 

_Oh,_ Sokka thinks. _Oh, there’s something else happening here._

He doesn’t get paid enough to handle somethings-else happening on top of messy divorces. That’s extra.

Azula turns to Zuko. “Whatever, we can get divorced. But I’m staying here no matter what. I’ll get a job, I’ll have my own money. I don’t need Father’s trust fund or my inheritance, I can do it myself.”

Sokka thinks not relying on your famously unstable father is probably a good idea in general. Oh, is he gonna have to learn stuff about trust law for this?

Ty Lee laughs, not as unkindly as future divorcees usually do. “What are you going to do, Azula, model? You’ve never worked a day in your life, except to be a ‘philanthropist.’”

Azula recoils. “First of all, philanthropy is work. All you’ve ever done is posting online, so. Secondly, so what if I’m going to model? It’s my life now, you don’t get to tell me what to do! If you want to leave, you don’t get to tell me what to do.”

“Fine! Do what you want!” Ty Lee yells, frustrated. 

It’s a little too early to be yelling-type frustrated, but that’s a lesson you learn about two-thirds of the way through a divorce, when you realize _now_ you’d really like to use your obligatory screaming match.

“Fine,” Azula says. “Zuko, do you know any jobs? Around here?”

Zuko looks at Azula with murder in his eyes. It’s cute. Sokka usually tries to mix in a little affection with his sibling-murder cravings, but it’s cute even though Zuko doesn’t.

Sokka’s guilty of many a stupid fight, but he thinks usually his fights don’t sound like this. That might just be because he tends to date people who are usually right if they start a fight, so Sokka goes through the motions with verve, but apologizes afterwards too. Then again, he’s still single and Ty Lee’s been married for five whole years, so maybe the secret is fighting like a third-grader.

Y’know, when Johnny said this whole thing was kinda weird, Sokka wrote it off as homophobia, but the more he thinks about it, it’s objectively pretty weird to be failing to mediate impending-divorce catfights between an heiress and an (alleged) member of a warrior cult for swimsuit models.

“Well, thank you so much for coming in to meet,” Zuko says, as if a migraine is coming on. “I think my client and I need to confer about our goals and objectives here, and we’ll send over an initial settlement proposal by end of next week, if that works. Sokka, we may need to set up a time to meet, but I know our clients are very busy,” which is clearly a formality, as Azula clearly does not have a job, “so maybe just you and I can handle preliminary discussions, if we can get a good grasp on what each of you would like to accomplish here.” He snaps his folio shut and drags Azula out of the room.

Ty Lee just looks at Sokka expectantly. “Was that good?” she says.

Sokka sighs and thunks his head lightly against the table.


	2. Chapter 2

Sokka tries to get a good grasp on Ty Lee’s goals and objectives. Ty Lee says, “I know she doesn’t really want to do this. She’s going to ruin her own life just to stay married to me.”

Sokka tries, “Well, do you want to be married to her?”

Ty Lee says, “No! I want to get divorced. Well, I _want_ to stay married, but not like this.”

Sokka’s unclear what this means, but he compiles a list of Ty Lee’s various desires anyway, brings them to a meeting with Zuko.

This time, it’s just the two of them in Zuko’s office, which is very Zuko: two white walls, then one sweeping glass wall overlooking the city and one sweeping glass wall looking into the interior of the office. Sokka wonders briefly about the list of decorative items Ty Lee wants from the Los Angeles house and how Azula tolerated what seems like an interminable amount of clutter if Azula’s genetically predisposed to loving neutrals and flat planes and crimson accents like her brother.

Zuko has a red-and-gold painting over a polished black credenza and his diplomas are smartly framed. _Princeton_ , Sokka thinks. Their colors are so bad. Sokka thinks that if he were smart, he’d try to be extra-smart to go to Columbia and get the good color scheme. He loves baby blue.

It’s a nice office, and Sokka can’t help but imagine Zuko working here late with one hand in his jet-black hair, a little ruffled. He likes the idea of Zuko a little less put-together, a little more human.

Sokka’s eyes catch on a set of photos on Zuko’s desk: one’s a family photo, stiff and posed. The other is of Zuko with two long sharp dao, sparring.

He looks happy and young in the photo, and Sokka kind of falls in love with that Zuko a little. He can see Young Zuko’s sweat-slick knuckles curling around the swords, can see the way Young Zuko is leaned into his stance, shoulders opened in the plain air, the knob of his hair reflecting off the bare skin of his scalp. He looks—not happy, but unguarded, at least. Like he’s used to working for it, like he thinks he deserves to relish in his little successes.

“Do you fight?” Sokka says, pointing to the photo.

“Not anymore,” Zuko says shortly. “Do you want to discuss settlement?”

Sokka takes a page from Ty Lee’s book and says, “No, not really.”

Zuko looks at him, and the look is dangerous, so Sokka digs through his bag to find the list of things Ty Lee wants, flattening out a crumpled corner against Zuko’s desk.

Sokka’s kind of into Zuko’s dangerous look.

Which is good, because he continues to see it for the next sixty minutes, probably would keep seeing it for longer, except Zuko tells him he’s got a deposition to take after lunch.

***

Sokka gets back to his office, opens a Westlaw tab, and types in _crush OR love OR ‘sexual relationship’ AND ‘opposing counsel’ AND ethics_ in the search bar. Nothing. Damn.

***

Sokka goes to the LGBT Bar Association events because it’s good to meet people, and he’d rather meet Kaylie-who-works-for-the-ACLU than Jackson-who-works-for-Big-Petroleum-Jelly. He’s fine at networking, but probably no one _loves_ it. He has plenty of buddies, sure, but he’s a little too normal for the kind of networking chats where you mingle your accomplishments with accolades for the accomplishments of others with faux-complaints about how _exhausted_ you are from doing _so_ much.

But there’s Zuko, and _oh_ , okay. He’s so used to seeing Zuko on his own turf, buttoned-up and professional and confident, that it throws him to see this Zuko. This Zuko’s loosened his tie a bit, but it doesn’t look quite right. Zuko doesn’t look like someone who’d have a loose tie. 

And he looks stressed. Not like, ambient post-work stress, but genuine fear. He’s standing probably a foot behind a cluster of people, nervously sipping a drink. The straw’s been chewed down a little. When Zuko notices him looking, Zuko grabs the straw, sucks the liquid off, and dunks it the other way to hide the damage, pretending like he can’t see Sokka.

 _Okay,_ Sokka thinks. He knows a few people in the cluster, so he comes up behind Zuko, says, “Hey, pal. Nice to see you.”

Zuko just looks at him, but it’s maybe a little warmer, like just knowing one person turns an event from apocalyptically uncomfortable to prostate-exam uncomfortable.

Sokka pushes forward, claps some friend-of-a-friend on the shoulder, makes small talk about the Mariners’ season for thirty seconds, and then shoves Zuko into the fray. “This is Zuko Sozin—”

“Nice to meet you,” Zuko says. His tone’s closer to apologetic than it was before. Sokka commits it to memory.

“—he works for Sozin Sage. We’re on a case together.”

“Oh,” someone says. Sokka can’t remember her name, but remembers her face well enough to know he should remember her name. “I didn’t know Sozin Sage did any family law.”

Zuko says, “I, uh. I don’t, usually. Returning a favor for a friend. I’m in patent litigation, just moved here from New York.”

Sokka didn’t _know_ that, because Zuko didn’t tell him, but it makes sense. He wonders what kind of thing gets you indebted to Azula Sozin, other than the blood oath between Sozins—which feels both very strong and very fickle, just based on what he sees on the news. 

But for someone who doesn’t usually do this kind of thing, Zuko is very good at divorces. 

It makes sense, Sokka thinks. He thinks Zuko would be good at most things—he’s clearly dogged.

Good deed accomplished, Sokka grabs a $4 Taco Tuesday margarita and downs it in two big gulps, then gets another $4 Taco Tuesday margarita to enjoy. Zuko makes a valiant effort to keep up conversation, but eventually he ends up next to Sokka in a booth. 

“I don’t like this,” Zuko says, and that’s maybe the first thing Zuko has said to him that feels like Zuko is talking to him as a person and not a means to an end, so Sokka listens, pushing his half-finished margarita over so Zuko can take a sip. 

(Zuko doesn’t, but it’s the thought that counts.)

“Yeah, buddy, it sucks, but it’s a necessary evil,” Sokka says.

He gets it. He gets drained if he has too many conversations about meaningless stuff all at once, ends up staring at a wall zoning out like he hates his life. That’s why he goes to hide in booths at random gay-friendly establishments during networking events: better to be absent than present but so sad-faced that ASPCA-ad-style Sarah McLachlan mixes play in the minds of any colleague who sees him.

“Is it necessary? Can’t we just do our jobs without being _friends_ with everyone all the time?” and yeah, Sokka would pretty much have expected Zuko would feel that way.

Sokka bumps Zuko’s shoulder with his own. “Fun to be friendly, though, right?”

Zuko says, “We aren’t friends,” but in the bar lighting—tastefully low, but bright enough to read the stiff cardboard menus—it looks like it’s a bit of a joke. His smile does a lot of work in taking his face from inhumanly and intimidatingly pretty to just inhumanly pretty.

“If we’re friends now,” Sokka says. “Can I ask you about fighting?”

Zuko stiffens up, bracing a hand on the underside of the table where he thinks Sokka can’t see. But Sokka can see it, just the strong right angle of his thumb pressing against the wood turning pale white under the force. 

“You can always _ask_.” 

Sokka wants to ask Zuko if he needs to be worried Azula’s going to come kill him in his office, but he knows enough not to bring up anything about the case right now.

“Were you any good?” Sokka asks, grinning.

“Yes,” Zuko says, but it isn’t condescending. It’s just sort of matter-of-fact. 

Sokka thinks it’s good Zuko is like this, makes him easy to understand. Sokka believes Zuko is telling the truth about being good at martial arts too, just based on his clearly insane “compete level” and “work ethic,” which he understands to be nearly as important as jacked shoulders and thighs in terms of overall martial arts talent.

“You should come to Wushu at the rec center—it’s on Thursdays at 7:30. We just warm up outside the locker room and then spar for forty-five minutes, because we only have the space for the hour. If you’re new in town, it’ll be good to meet new people.” 

Sokka considers what he knows about Zuko. 

“And if you don’t want to meet new people, it’ll be good to have some space to spread out without destroying your apartment. If you dress fast, you might even have a few minutes alone.”

“I’ll probably still be at work,” Zuko says. Sokka would’ve expected it to sound like a brush-off, but it’s something like longing.

Sokka files it in the little gray-green cabinet he’s labeled _Zuko_ in his brain: Zuko was good at wielding various traditional weapons, probably still is. Zuko doesn’t do it anymore, but he wants to. Zuko works a lot, he’s good at it, but he doesn’t have many friends.

Oh, and Zuko goes to LGBT Bar Happy Hours, which Sokka would hate to make assumptions about, but, well. He can’t imagine why you’d go, unless you were L, G, B, T, or a plus of some sort. And the L is probably out.

He sips his margarita. 

Yeah, you definitely wouldn’t come for the $4 margaritas.

*** 

Sokka comes early and alone for their next settlement meeting, gets let in by Maddie-the-office-manager, who is much nicer now that she’s seen him a few times, which hopefully means Zuko doesn’t hate Sokka enough that everyone in the office knows about it.

He peeks through the glass pane of Zuko’ office and sees Zuko eating something out of a huge glass Tupperware. It looks high-protein. 

Sokka’s stomach grumbles jealously.

He’d been thinking maybe he’d say “Oh, we could grab lunch and keep talking,” very professionally, of course, and then maybe go to the little Mediterranean restaurant with the good falafel and weird velvet seats and share appetizers they could maybe accidentally touch fingers over. And then he’d remind Zuko about Wushu and see him at Wushu and keep seeing him until after the case is over, just casual friendly fun chats. And then maybe after the case is over, he’d say, “Well, actually, you only do patent law, so we probably wouldn’t ever work together, so it won’t be weird if you say no, but do you want to go on a date?” It’s low-pressure: they’ll both know how to get divorced easily by then, so even marriage would be casual, right?

Maybe that’s a lot of expectations to put on a casual lunch, but Sokka’s mom always told him to have big dreams and fight for them—and it seems like a small dream to touch hands over some tahini now and go on a simple date a few months from now. A year, maybe, if this divorce is going to keep dragging on.

He probably should’ve just eaten lunch beforehand. He could eat two lunches, but eating zero isn’t ideal.

Zuko is clearly talking to someone on the computer in his office, a steady stream of Probably-Japanese emanating from the speaker. He’s smiling, like a real, actual smile, and it makes Sokka wish he remembered more of the poetry from his undergrad English 106: _Romantic Poetry Through 1900_ class. Zuko says something with a mock-serious face, sticks his tongue out a little, and whoever is inside the computer howls with laughter. Zuko smiles, a nervous type of self-satisfied like he doesn’t expect the positive reinforcement.

 _Okay_ , Sokka thinks. He puts _Zuko is funny_ into his Zuko Sozin file cabinet. He wishes he could make Zuko laugh like that. Even if he did, he thinks he’d be stressed Zuko was laughing _at_ him and not, you know, because Zuko thinks he’s funny.

Sokka loops back to the bathroom, splashes some water on his face until he’s only three minutes early, and then heads back. The Tupperware is nowhere to be seen, and Zuko smiles at him as he comes in. 

It’s an improvement, but it’s nowhere near the grin Sokka just learned Zuko was capable of seven minutes ago.

The conversation’s more productive this time around, tricky only because neither Azula nor Ty Lee seem to care all that much about how to distribute, well. Anything. They try to do it fairly. Most of the property divides easily: there’s the house in LA for Azula, a condo in Seattle for Ty Lee. Their retirement accounts are separate, so those divide clearly.

Ty Lee gets all the weird tchotchkes she wanted: both pink Kitchenaid mixers, a shocking amount of camping equipment, and millions of dollars in artwork Sokka would characterize as “objectively horrifying,” but clearly nothing’s objective if someone’s willing to spend millions of dollars on it.

Azula gets the tiger monkey.

(Ty Lee had said, “I’ll miss her, sure, but she’s been living with Azula forever. I would never try to take her from Azula. I don’t know why she’d even think I would.” She’d seemed a little hurt, but Sokka’s just thankful that little hurt didn’t morph into resentful demands to keep the tiger monkey. It’s surprising how often he has to convince clients that probably a Newfoundland bear puppy is a better solution to this problem than a newfound desire to steal a pet out of spite.)

Zuko types up the proposal as they speak, lets Sokka go behind his desk and poke at it from over his shoulder until it’s perfect, then sends it off to Azula. Sokka grabs his phone and emails it to Ty Lee. He does it a bit slowly, because once he’s done, it’s not like he has a reason to keep being in Zuko’s office, in his space, behind his desk.

But there’s only so long you can take to send over a document, so he has to get up, grab his bag, and head for the door eventually.

He thinks about it for a second, then rests his arm on Zuko’s doorframe to lean casually, runs a hand casually through his hair. He hopes it’s casual. “Hey, Zuko,” he says. He waits to see if Zuko corrects him back to Mr. Sozin, but he thinks it’s fine this time. He’s trying. “Do you want to grab lunch and keep talking about this?”

He thinks Zuko could eat two lunches if he wanted.

Zuko looks at him, looks at his arm where it’s sitting against the doorframe, and says, “Yeah, I haven’t eaten yet, I could. Yeah. Do you want to?”

Sokka grins, but tries to keep some of the grin secret. _Zuko is a good liar_ , he writes on the tab of a little mental manila folder, _when he wants to be_. “Yeah, I do.”

***

Sokka isn’t expecting Zuko to show up for Wushu, even though lunch felt friendly—felt more than friendly, really, a little more energy leaking out of Zuko and a few smiles and not that much conversation about the case, really, except to complain about their respective clients—so when someone grabs him on the shoulder as he’s digging in his bag at the rec center, he very nearly whips his boomerang right in Zuko’s face.

Zuko winces. “Careful, do you want to mess up the other half of my face?”

Sokka grins. “It’s not messed up, it’s fun. No one forgets your face. Not that I would have, if it didn’t have the—you know, the thing, but it’s not bad, it’s just your face. Which isn’t bad.” Sokka takes a turn at wincing. “Can we do something other than talking? I’m not good at it.”

“Yeah, you’re telling me. ‘The thing,’” Zuko says, rolling his eyes.

“It’s a thing!” Sokka says defensively, throwing his hands up. It is a thing, after all.

Zuko looks just like Azula when he uses that mocking voice. Sokka knows better than to say that, though, because if Zuko’s mocking face is just like Azula’s, he doesn’t want to awaken angry Zuko either. Just in case that’s also a familial trait.

Sokka watches the lean line of Zuko’s body as he stretches out against the wall, pull tabs from bulletin board flyers fluttering into his face. He watches the stretch of Zuko’s thighs and the way he closes his eyes to focus on rolling the tension out of his neck. It shouldn’t be surprising that Zuko has so many different little personalities, but Sokka doesn’t control when he realizes things and when he’s surprised by them—Zuko’s always himself, but Sokka’s fascinated by the way he refracts out against the people watching him, against the expectations of the moment.

“Fine, let’s do it. No weapons for now, though, I don’t trust you with that thing.” Zuko glares at the boomerang. Kind of dramatic, given Sokka _didn’t_ put his eye out after all.

It’s harder to put up a calculated façade when you’re fighting, Sokka knows. It’s why he likes it so much—he knows he doesn’t have the brain to be the brain of most operations, even if he’s smart, even if he’s good at the logistics of it all, but when he fights, it’s not so hard to connect the dots.

As long as you control the punches and the swings, you control your opponent too, pin them down to moves you can counter easy as breathing. You have to focus all of your attention on your opponent, watch their movements and tells, anticipate the moment they’ll stumble so you can strike.

Sometimes in the office, he has so many different cases running that there’s no time to take a second to strategize, to make sure every step is the right one. He just has to fumble towards a resolution, next step after next step, and it feels exhausting and a little stifling there, but fighting against Zuko—it feels natural, like each punch and counterpunch are building towards something significant even if each step gets lost in the rhythm of their movements.

Zuko’s good, but he’s clearly out of practice, eyes frantic following Sokka’s hips when he spins into a kick straight to Zuko’s sternum—light, but contact all the same.

Sokka isn’t expecting him to go down so easy—isn’t expecting him to go down at all, really, planning on using the force of Zuko’s definitely-still-standing body to ground the ball of his foot as he evens his hips back out and gets back into his stance. When Zuko falls flat against the threadbare mat, Sokka loses his balance and goes flying. He twists onto his knee on top of Zuko, which—he really can’t emphasize this one enough—was not his intent going into _any_ of this.

He can’t help but like it. Zuko’s breathing heavy through his mouth, and Sokka’s close enough he can almost feel the moisture from his breath. Almost.

“Captured you,” Sokka says. “Now you have to tell me why my client thinks she has to get divorced to do you a solid, or I’ll bring Boomerang back in to give you the Eye Extractor 3000.”

Zuko flushes and shoves Sokka off of him. “I thought we were _friends_ ,” he says, and he turns on his heel and heads for the locker room.

“I wasn’t trying to take you down, jerk!” Sokka shouts at Zuko’s retreating back, but then he jogs after him, because they’re friends, right?

“Also, that was a _joke_ , it’s clearly a _joke_! Hey! Hey, there’s a happy hour thing in the locker room every week, we don’t use it!” Sokka yells.

Not to mention it’s kind of dick move to run to the locker room just because someone beats you in practice combat or makes a joke about your mutual job where you may or may not be playing opposing roles. Everyone’s an adult—it’s just work.

“Sokka,” Zuko says. “Why would _anyone_ go to happy hour in the locker room?” He pushes the door open, and sure enough, there’s a totally empty locker room.

“How could I have known that? But okay,” he says, shrugging, “I guess someone’s just trying to scope me out by making me change in the hallway. I’m cool with it.”

“Can you stop _doing that_?” Zuko says, stripping his shirt off with a lot of force. Shirts aren’t so hard to take off in Sokka’s experience.

“What am I doing that’s so offensive to you?” Sokka says.

“It’s not like you would understand the position I’m in!” Zuko snaps.

Sokka scratches his head.

Is Zuko going to monologue at him?

Honestly, Sokka thinks that might help with the whole Understanding Zuko Project.

“Uh,” Sokka says. “No, I don’t, I guess. Is that okay?”

“It’s always about what other people need from me and never about what I want,” Zuko mutters.

“What do you want?” Sokka asks.

“I want to stop cleaning up after Azula. This— _thing_ , with Ty Lee—it’s only a problem because Father thinks she’s like him. He thinks everything’s about power, and Azula’s crazy, and she’s irresponsible, and she’s cruel, and it’s usually about power. I don’t think _getting married_ was about power for Azula, at least. But of course the solution is that _I_ get another responsibility I never asked for, that _I_ can never do enough for him still but _I_ have to run the company _and_ the firm _and_ do my job on top of all of it _and_ grovel at my father’s feet for the privilege to run myself into the ground. Azula can fall in love and fuck over the family if she wants, but I don’t get to feel _anything_.”

Sokka nods, but he doesn’t really get it. Hopefully he doesn’t need to get it. “I think you’re doing great, buddy.”

Zuko laughs, a high tight note. “You’re the worst part,” Zuko says. “Before I met you, I didn’t have any reason not to let it all happen to me, and now I’m blowing off board meetings, why? To let you pump me for information about my sister? My client? Both of those.”

“You’re blowing off meetings for me?” Sokka asks, curious in a soft, faraway way. It seems uncharacteristic, is all, seems selfish in a way that makes Sokka feel optimistic and bright.

Zuko just kisses him, grabs his face and pins him against the lockers. Sokka’s stunned, but he lets his eyes close, lets it happen to him. He can feel the bone of Zuko’s thumb pushing into his cheek, the sharp intent behind Zuko’s mouth on his. It’s hard work, almost—like, kissing is usually simple, fun, and this feels like sparring with Zuko: intense, challenging, dangerous, tipping into something zippy and harsh. Sokka can feel it from Zuko’s palm on the cut of his jaw down to all of the little places he’s never thought about when he’s kissed anyone before, like the scar tissue on his arm tugging against itself as he reaches towards Zuko and the back of his knees pressed against the cool metal of the lockers. It feels like Zuko’s proving something to Sokka, like he’s proving it to himself too. Sokka wants more than that in his head, but in his body…well, his body’s fine with just this, but it’s such a bad idea.

He’s not the first of them to realize it—he suspects Zuko knew the whole time how bad of an idea it was, and at least Zuko had some lead time to think about that. Sokka was just going with the flow. Still, it feels like a loss when Zuko pulls away.

“Uh, we can’t…do that,” Sokka says weakly. “I mean, I think you’ve clearly got some other conflicts of interest going on here, but this would be. Yeah. A big one.”

“I know,” Zuko says. “I didn’t fail Professional Responsibility, I know the rules. Forget about all of this.” He takes a deep breath. “ _Please_ ,” he asks with a shocking amount of earnestness. “Forget about this, it was stupid.”

Sokka reaches for Zuko’s hand, which is an impulse straight from the tiger monkey part of his brain focused only on physical touch at the expense of common sense, but he stops himself in time. “I didn’t say it was stupid.”

The door swings open, the noise cracking through the bizarrely ceramic silence. Zuko jumps nearly out of his skin.

“Uncle? What are you doing here?” Zuko says. How many relatives does Zuko _have_? And more importantly, what proportion of those are going to ruin Sokka’s moments with his hot opposing counsel?

The old man—Zuko’s uncle, apparently, laughs, a short ‘ho ho’ sound with a comforting shaky tenor to it that you have to earn by getting mad old. “My dear nephew,” he says. “What are _you_ doing here? Did you read the sign I put up? It’s Happy Hour for Uncle Iroh!”

Sokka mouths, _Your uncle goes to Bits and Bytes Tech Happy Hour? What, did he invent the computer in 1758?_

Iroh laughs again. “My friend, there is no happy hour. I like to stretch out after Tai Chi for Seniors without young folks reminding me how very old I am by canoodling in the locker room. Very nice to meet you,” he says, inclining his head at Sokka before pulling a tea kettle from a locker.

“Do you want a cup? It’s my special blend.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can you believe i used to be a good Creative Writer and experiencer of varied emotions before law school. phew!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the wait, friends. I got super-depressed! Thank you for all your kind comments <3

Sokka doesn’t let kissing his opposing counsel get in the way of his duty to his client. They’d worked so (moderately) hard on the settlement proposal before things went to…well, not shit. It wasn’t shit. It was pretty good, but it does make Sokka a little hesitant to dash out a quick email in Zuko’s direction, that’s for sure.

So maybe it was pretty bad professionally and pretty good personally. Having fun isn’t an ethics violation, Sokka thinks. He’s not going to bring that to the attention of the Bar in case they change their mind on that point. But because Sokka’s a good lawyer, none of that matters. He has to show Ty Lee the settlement proposal so he can close the door on this case entirely.

Because he’s only an okay lawyer, Ty Lee doesn’t love the settlement proposal. It makes no sense, because she had no real demands and got everything she _did_ demand.

Sokka tugs on the cord of his phone anxiously, then stops tugging, because he’s afraid the plug connecting the receiver to the cord will dislodge, and then he’d have to call Ty Lee back, and he thinks probably if this call ends, he won’t have the wherewithal to continue it.

“Ty Lee, buddy. Maybe it’d be better if I had a better sense of where your head is, emotionally.” This is the professional version of “You can’t get mad at me, because I have no idea what the fuck you’re thinking, so that’s kind of your fault, right?”

Ty Lee breathes a long breath through the phone, then says, “Maybe you should make me that sad gay playlist after all. Is there sad ABBA?”

Sokka writes _ask zuko about abba’s emotional range_ on a mental Post-it and sticks it to his brain-wall.

Ty Lee says, “I think it’s just—the whole thing is just. It’s weird, isn’t it?”

Sokka nods, but then he realizes Ty Lee can’t see the nod, so he quickly says, “Of course it’s weird. But it’s better to get it over with as quickly as possible so you can have some certainty.”

“Wouldn’t we have already? Gotten it over with, I mean,” Ty Lee says. She sounds both physically and emotionally faraway. “If we wanted to, wouldn’t we have gotten it over with when it happened? Not now, not when it’s just because things are so weird.”

“Do you want to get divorced _now_ , though?” Sokka says.

“I wanted to get married,” Ty Lee says. “Azula wanted to make me happy, I think. But I wanted to. I don’t think she ever really _got_ how much I wanted to.”

Sokka nods. It’s okay that Ty Lee can’t see him do it, he doesn’t think it matters much.

“We weren’t dating, or anything. It just happened. I move around so much, it just made sense to stay with her when I went to LA, so we were in the same space all the time. We were just joking around, and then it was a more serious joke, and then we were married .”

Sokka scribbles a timeline on a legal pad, crosses it out a few separate times, and then decides it doesn’t matter.

“And she never brought up getting divorced, but I never did either, because I liked being married to her. But I think if I were a better friend, I would’ve. I should’ve,” Ty Lee says. “We’d just see each other whenever I was in LA, which isn’t that much. And I still didn’t say anything, because.”

There’s a clicking noise on the phone, and Sokka hopes it’s not Ty Lee’s throat trying to cry, because he only got six hours of sleep and he doesn’t know he can handle tears over the phone.

“Because I just felt so alone, right? Like, everyone likes me, but I’m not anyone’s favorite. They just forget about me when I’m not right there shoving myself in front of them. Everyone thinks I’m just an airhead who never gets sad, but Azula _got_ me. She knew me better than anyone else. She probably still does.

And everyone thought she was so scary, but she wasn’t to me. She was just my best friend. And it’s not like I _wanted_ anyone else, so it didn’t matter. To _me_ , at least. And I liked it. I mean, you’ve seen her. She’s…wow. And it felt like, yeah, this is something that makes me feel like I have a home. Gives me a reason to come back to one place and feel like I can settle in for a little bit. I was lonely, and I could feel myself being replaced. But you can’t replace your wife.”

Ty Lee pauses for a second, thinking. “You can’t, right?”

Sokka zones back in. “Uh, no, you can only be married to one person at a time. But you can, like. Date, I guess, if you wanted.”

Ty Lee lets out another close-to-crying breath. _Was that the wrong answer?_ “Do you think she was?” Ty Lee asks. “Do you think she was dating other people?”

Sokka has absolutely no way to know that, so he just stays quiet.

“Moving to Seattle was a little different. I could finally think about it and get some space. You know, I’d never really _moved_ anywhere before—it was all just jumping around. And I think it’s just time. I want it to be over. I don’t want to keep feeling like I forced Azula into doing something because I felt lonely, like. I can’t trap her forever just to be my security blanket. I feel better now. I can be on my own. I’m independent. And now she feels like he has to move here to take care of me, or whatever.”

Ty Lee waits for a response, then says, “Was that good? I asked my therapist about all of this, and she just said, ‘Oh, holy shit,’ so I don’t know.”

Sokka takes a page from Ty Lee’s therapist’s book and says, “Oh, holy shit.” Then he asks, “So, uh. Excuse me for this question, but were you, y’know. _Intimate_?”

“Oh, yeah. Duh, we’d been having sex even before we got married,” Ty Lee says, snapping back from her crying stint with the shocking resilience of one of Sokka’s fresher rubber bands.

“Okay, Sokka says, “So, let me know if this seems crazy, but you were married to your wife for five years, you were having sex with her, you were living with her often when you were working in LA or weren’t busy, she came here to live in your city with you, and you want to get divorced because you think she _doesn’t like you_?”

“No,” Ty Lee says, like Sokka is stupid. Sokka might be, but he’s not _so_ stupid. “She _likes_ me fine. She just shouldn’t be married to me.”

“Do you think,” Sokka tries, “that maybe even if she didn’t really want to get married at the beginning, that living together for five years might have otherwise made her want to be married to you? And maybe she just didn’t say that, because she was already married to you?”

“I mean, it’s a little more complicated than that. Her dad’s, like, a major dick about this stuff, and she’s going to have to step down from the company if any of this goes public. He doesn’t want anyone to have influence over his kids except him. And he definitely doesn’t wanna risk anyone else getting family money in a divorce. He would be…he would be _so_ mad, Sokka, and he’s _scary_. People say Azula’s scary, but she’s not. He’s scary. She just says she doesn’t care about it, because she’s not thinking.”

“Did she say she wasn’t willing to risk it?” Sokka asks. He feels more than a little out of his depth. Maybe he can call in a family therapist.

“No, she said ‘Ty Lee, sometimes you have to sacrifice for love.’”

“You _lived_ together,” Sokka repeats, dumbfounded. “And there weren’t any problems or anything, you just want to get divorced?”

“Well, like I said. It was only sometimes. Oh, and when I got my deviated septum fixed, I flew down for eight weeks so she could bring me things in bed. That was great. Do you think I could do another surgery?”

“Did you talk? Outside of seeing each other?”

“Oh, yeah. Every day, pretty much.” Ty Lee pauses for a moment. "Do you want screenshots?" she says.

Sokka scrambles to grab his cell phone from under a mess of legal pads as it dings seven or eight times in quick succession with the messages

That’s a few too many heart emojis for a _DO NOT TEXT_ contact name. Sokka scrolls through the texts. “Oh, holy shit, Ty Lee.”

Ty Lee just says, “That’s what my mom said too.”

***

Sokka thinks it should be weirder when he sees Zuko again. It probably would be more strange if Zuko talked about the fact they kissed, but he has a stone-faced resolve about ignoring the whole thing. Sokka knows, because Sokka had said, “I know we shouldn’t have kissed, but I’m willing to be normal about it. Look, here I am, being normal about it,” and Zuko had said, “We’re prepared to file the petition if you and your client aren’t moving on the settlement offer we discussed.”

“Well, file the petition, then, because we’re not moving on the settlement offer,” Sokka says cheerfully. “Wait, no, that came out wrong.”

Zuko glares. “I’d love to know how exactly that ‘came out wrong.’”

“I _mean_ we’re not moving on the settlement offer, or the petition, or any of it. We’re scheming. Can you scheme?”

***

Sokka is honestly: kind of impressed by Zuko’s scheming. It takes them four hours, but by the end of it, they have a meticulously-drafted post-nuptial agreement protecting Azula’s assets. Not as good as a prenup, but in a pinch, Sokka can make it do what it needs to do.

“We can’t just throw a post-nup at them,” Zuko says. “They have to want to reconcile.”

“That’s not going to be _hard_. It’ll work out. It’s not like we can lock them in a room with a heart-shaped bed and champagne until—“

“Unless,” Zuko says, and Sokka’s used to composed, almost-repressed (okay, not “almost.” Just repressed.) Zuko. He’s used to angry Zuko, with a lot of energy to burn through and misdirected fury at the weight of expectations bearing down on him. But he hasn’t seen this kind of Zuko before, who is sly and winking and… _fun?_ It feels like miles from Zuko blowing up at him in the rec center locker room, like that Zuko was an aberration.

“Unless?” Sokka repeats.

Zuko tosses his keys in the air and catches them.

“Unless we did set the scene,” Zuko says, gesturing around his office. “Tasteful, subtle. Could get some candles and flowers. And tell them to have a conversation”

“Oh, you wanna romance this place up? We can romance this place up.”

Zuko leads him to a sleek BMW, clean but not flashy. The inside has fewer fast food wrappers and loose cups than Sokka’s, but who’s counting? Zuko’s calm on the drive over, humming softly when Sokka turns the radio on. (And he let Sokka turn the radio on, which Sokka hadn’t been sure would work out so well when he tried.)

Sokka pops the door immediately when Zuko parks in the Target parking lot, but Zuko doesn’t make a move to get out. Sokka tries to close the door again as quietly as possible, sheepish.

“You good, buddy?” he says.

“No, I’m. Ugh, I don’t want to say this, it’s stupid.”

“Come on, give me something here, bud.”

“I feel like a jackass for being so weird to you. Thank you. For helping me. I was so concerned there was no way around this. I knew it would blow up on them, which means it would blow up on me for not being able to fix it, and you fixed it even though you didn’t have to and you didn’t have to work with me to do it.”

“It’s rough, but you can’t fix everything,” Sokka says. He tries to keep his voice soft, like he’s talking to a spooked kitten. He feels like he hasn’t tried this hard to be a good listener in ages, and it makes him a little itchy. Still, it’s worth it to see Zuko look at him like maybe he thinks Sokka gets it. “You have to ask for help sometimes.”

“I didn’t even know where to start. Azula surprises me sometimes. I know I wouldn’t have just…gotten married out of nowhere.”

“What would you do, though? If you wanted to get married?” Sokka thinks whatever Azula and Ty Lee have going on is crazy, but he cries at _Bridget Jones’ Diary_ , so it’s also a little romantic to see people behaving in crazy ways for love.

“I wasn’t going to want to. I don’t need to—no one _needs_ to, but.” Zuko takes a deep breath and unclicks his seatbelt. He fiddles with the window controls a bit and modulates his breathing carefully.

“But what? You have to tell someone these things.”

“But I’m…hard to love anyway. My mom—well, my mom’s gone, so. And Ozai, well. He needs me to be who he wants me to be, but I think he would hate me if I tried to tell him I’m not that person.” Zuko takes a deep breath and laughs, a little rueful. “I know he would, because I tried.”

“What happened?” Sokka says. He tries to be delicate, but he’s pretty sure demanding an explanation but a little quieter than normal volume doesn’t come across as delicate to everyone.

Zuko gestures towards his eye. “This, mostly.”

Oh, fuck. “Oh, fuck, I’m so sorry—“

“Look, Sokka. I don’t need your pity. I don’t need anyone’s pity. This always happens when I tell people: they look at me like I’m weak, or like I need someone to handle me with kid-pup gloves. I’m an adult, I’m successful. I’m past it.”

It doesn’t seem like Zuko’s past it. In fact, sometimes it seems like Zuko says things just to put Sokka a bit on edge, to make him uncomfortable he doesn’t ask follow-up questions. It isn’t ideal, but it takes a lot to get Sokka really uncomfortable. Still, Zuko’s done a lot of sharing for today, comparatively speaking. It’s progress.

“You got it, man. Consider me un-pitying you. I just think you’re wrong.”

“About my face?” Zuko says. “It’s right there. I look at it in the mirror.”

“About being difficult to love. Even if you are difficult to have a conversation with sometimes, Gods.”

Zuko flushes, his blush reaching up until it just kisses his scar. The pinks almost match, and Sokka can’t stop staring. It’s not an ideal condition to have right now, not when Zuko’s so clearly raw and aching from being vulnerable. Sokka doesn’t understand it, but he gets it all the same: sometimes you don’t want people to see all of the mushy and scared internal parts of you at the same time as the outside parts. It’s too much, maybe, or too intense.

It’s not close to Valentine’s Day, Sokka thinks, but it’s close enough that the interior of the store is decked out in gauzy reds and pinks, a sharp antonym for the “tasteful” Zuko’d wanted.

“Look,” Sokka says, and pushes a stuffed bear’s hand.

“I wuv you,” the bear says, mechanical with a tinny whine to it.

“We just met, are you kidding?” Sokka says, wiggling his eyebrows. Zuko smiles into his collar.

 _Jackass_. He could’ve given Sokka a real laugh for that.

Zuko manages to locate some candles, some sheer fabrics, and some soft pillows. Sokka throws in the love bear for good measure. The whole nine yards, if “yards” was a euphemism for “ways to romance up a conference room to facilitate communication.” And if “facilitate communication” was a euphemism for “lock their clients in a room until the problem solves itself.” Well, actually, that’s not an ‘if’-type statement: it is a euphemism for doing precisely that.

“Do you really think this is going to work?” Zuko says, skeptical.

“Well, there’s only one way to figure out—okay, actually, I do think it’s going to work. None of that ‘only one way to find out’ stuff. Call your client in.”

***

Sokka can hear muffled shouting from the conference room. He’s still pretty sure it’s going to work. “Do you wanna take a walk?” he asks, and Zuko rolls his eyes, but he says, “There’s a good food truck that hangs out around the park.”

There is a good food truck that hangs out around the park, Sokka learns. He tears the heel off of his sausage sandwich and throws it towards the turtle ducks in the park.

“They’re not supposed to eat that,” Zuko says.

“None of us are _supposed_ to eat sausage. If you gave a sausage to a caveman, they’d be like ‘pretty sure these parts of the animal were never supposed to touch, and now they’re all encased together and put on a delicious sandwich?’ But they can live a little.”

When they come back, there’s a signed post-nup on the table, a solid half of the flowers are missing, and the file cabinet Zuko had used to blockade the conference room door is tipped over. There’s a Post-it on the signed document reading, “Headed on a real honeymoon. You forgot to lock a notary in with us, so we made do.”

“Azula,” Zuko says. “This is how she is.”

“That’s not bad, is it? That barely took,” Sokka checks his watch. “Three hours. And they got a free escape room out of it. That’s a bonding exercise that usually runs you at least a few dollars in Seattle. We’re entrepreneurs, really.”

“Well,” Zuko says. “I guess that’s it, then.”

Sokka shuffles his feet. It feels like a significant time stretching out in front of them, and Sokka mostly wants to unstretch it. Ball it back up. Unless balling it up would entail doing the whole case again, because he’s had enough of that to last a long while. “I guess that’s it. So this is—“

“We probably won’t work with each other again, because I—“

“—because you don’t—do this kind of stuff, yeah—“

“So we probably won’t—“

“Yeah, we probably won’t see each other, unless you want to come back to Wushu, or—“ Sokka tries weakly.

“Unless you wanted to go on a date sometime, or something like that.”

“—or the LGBT Bar events, I don’t own those. Anyone can go.” Sokka takes another deep breath. “You know what, no, this is stupid. You and Azula are just the same. Neither of you can talk about your feelings. I don’t want—I don’t want you to come to fucking Wushu. I mean, you can. If you want. But I want us to go on a date, and maybe go on a few more dates, and get a bear dog or a condo with a fishtank, and then it wouldn’t really be such a big deal if we got married, because—because I know how to get divorced, it’s my whole thing, and now you know too, so it’d be equal. So fuck whatever—“

“Sokka,” Zuko says. He looks like he’s putting on a show of patience, which is deeply at odds with the restless anxious energy Sokka’s just gonna let take over. It doesn’t seem like it’ll be all that effective to try to quash it anyway.

“Zuko,” Sokka says. Are his teeth chattering? From stress? He’s an adult man, he can ask his (former!) opposing counsel out on a (totally legal!) date. It doesn’t even matter if he says no—it’s like Zuko said, they won’t see each other, unless he wanted to go on a date sometime or…

 _Oh._ Oh, okay. Oh, that’s fine, Sokka thinks. “Oh, I just realized you—“

“Yeah,” Zuko says. “I was getting there—“

“Do you wanna take it back? Because I’m stupid and I don’t listen and I talk too much and freak out sometimes?”

“No,” Zuko says, and that feels better than Zuko asking the first time. Mostly because Sokka can pay attention to it, can see the way Zuko’s smiling lightly, the way his hand is resting against his thigh so gently, and Sokka wants. He wants all of it—the date, Zuko, the offering to get divorced before they do any of that.

“Oh, okay. Well, that’s good, because I am down to. Take you up on it. Down to get down. You know.”

“Maybe I will take it back,” Zuko says, grinning.

“No, nope, not allowed. Too late now,” Sokka says.

When Zuko kisses him, soft and gentle, it feels like a beginning instead of an end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3 I’ve learned my lesson about posting in chapters! No one yell at me. It’s why I don’t do it. 
> 
> Princeton doesn’t have a law school. It’s a joke. Get it, because Zuko’s a prince? Also: today I learned ATLA universe has goat-dogs. I set this in Seattle literally just to type Seattle Sealhawks. 
> 
> Merry Christmas to Ivy, and sorry I didn’t write you pornography or up to my standards. Maybe for your birthday. (PS many of you gave me too much credit for Drama--this was always going to be exactly this silly.)


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